Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Wentworth Confused About Drinking on Campus

State Sen. Jeff Wentworth, R-San Antonio, played hardball with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews last week, when the pair scuffled over whether suds are allowed on college campuses.

Wentworth, discussing his legislation that would allow concealed handguns on college campuses, balked when Matthews wondered whether "booze and guns" are a healthy combination.

"We don’t have bars on campus in Texas," Wentworth said on the Feb. 22 segment.

Matthews: "You don’t?"

Wentworth: "It’s against the law in Texas. That’s exactly right."

Matthews: "It is?"

Wentworth: "Yes, sir. No alcohol allowed."

The fascinating story goes on to show that it's not exactly like the good Senator said. It makes one wonder, aside from the stupidity of the lie, why Wentworth would be trying to paint such a picture of campus life in Texas? Maybe he's hardpressed to respond to the most common complaint about guns on campus.

5 comments:

THe whole discussion has many places where truths may be told that do not tell the whole story.

There may be a law that prohibits bars on campus. That does not mean alcohol is not present.

Even if there were bars on campus or at least, places where beer was readily available, those states that allow carry into bars or even allow consumption while carrying have not had issues with permitees doing stupid things while drinking ON THE WHOLE. Minnesota allows a BAC of .04 while carrying. So far we have only found case in 8 years of a misuse under the influence and in that situation no one was seriously hurt.

Minnesota as an entire state has only revoked 8 or 9 permits for any reason in the past five years. That amounts to about one revocation for every 25000 permits. And that includes all reasons not just alcohol.

Another factor not discussed is that a great many people on a major state university are a lot older than traditionally defined. Automatically portraying all students as members of animal house type frats is a stretch.

Data has shown permit holders behave far better than the general population and there are several universities which have carry provisions which have not had news making incidents.

You know what, P. Why don't we update the database with all the mental health records as well as double checking that the criminal info is up to date. Then let's recheck those Minnesota permit holders. You wouldn't have that cherry-picked stat you mentioned, the 1 out of 25,000, which by the way you didn't provide a link to either.

Some people think, I'm one of them, that when concealed carry permit holders do some bad behaviour which would normally disqualify them, that no one is checking and ensuring that the appropriate revocation takes place.

So, you've got some that passed the original background check with a false-positive, and you've got some others who become disqualified after and no one knows it. For these reasons I don't put much stock in those unbelievably low revocation claims.